Sun's Zander talks tough to competitors
By Stephen Shankland
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Nov. 27, 4:00 a.m. PT
Sun Microsystems chief operating officer Ed Zander may not be as
outspoken as his boss, Scott McNealy, but he's a close second.
Zander, who has been with Sun since 1987, has seen the company claw its
way from a seller of niche Unix workstations to a powerhouse of the
computing landscape. By selling ever-increasing numbers of powerful and
profitable server computers--the brains of the Internet and of
corporate
networks--Sun has put Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Intel on the
defensive.
In doing so, though, Sun has stepped on more than a few toes. The Palo
Alto,
Calif.-based company has run into trouble trying to spread its Java
software as widely as possible while
simultaneously maintaining some control. It's also roused the wrath of
Intel, which accused Sun of not
working hard enough to get Sun's Solaris operating system working on
Intel's upcoming high-end Itanium
processors.
But Zander is unapologetic. In a wide-ranging interview with News.com,
he took on Intel, Microsoft, and
even the Linux movement that so many companies work hard to curry favor
with.
The thing with Linux today--I call it the bathtub. I can throw source in
there. It's all floating around and
it's available to everybody. But I as a vendor can take anything I want
out of that bathtub and call it Linux.
Now if you think that's going to work for application developers, call
me in a year or two when IBM's
Linux is different than HP's Linux is different than Dell's Linux and
(a customer) will have to recompile
five times. You've broken it effectively. So you cannot depend on one
Linux.
--
Regards
RaghuNath
WSS-Team
TexasInstruments
Living on Earth is expensive, but it does include a free trip
round the sun
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